


Ethel Muggs and the Infinite Gherkin

by MistressOfMalplaquet



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, I might just be a bit jealous of Ethel in this story, Math genius!Ethel, bughead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressOfMalplaquet/pseuds/MistressOfMalplaquet
Summary: In which the author attempts to clean up some of her messes.(Loosely connected to Skate Key with some spoilers for that story.)





	Ethel Muggs and the Infinite Gherkin

Big Ethel. Ugly Muggs. Elephant. Hippo.

Ethel Muggs has heard it all.

She’s used to having no friends. Sometimes she even prefers solitude, since she can concentrate on a constant swirl of numbers and concepts in her brain. While other kids go to soccer practice and dance class, Ethel sits in her room and dreams about Cantor’s Infinite Sets and the Enigma Machine.

By 5th grade, she doing pre-algebra. When she hits high school, she already understands calculus.

“Math?” her mother asks. “Really?” Unlike her daughter, she’s tiny, thin as a wraith. Ethel takes after her father, who just winks and pulls his daughter in for a quick hug.

“Certainly didn’t get it from me,” he jokes.

So Ethel’s not shocked when Jughead Jones asks her to tutor him in math, since most of her social interactions are based on helping other students. She _is_ surprised, however, by how much she enjoys being with him. He’s funny and kind, even though he’s useless in math. English, he explains, is more his thing, and what say they meet up at Pops since there’s a bottomless cup of coffee Wednesday nights?

“Pops?” She blinks. “With me? Are you sure?”

#

He’s sure. They sit at a booth and work on his quadratics, which is a lot like doing the polka in quicksand. Ethel’s determined he passes the semester, however, and she refuses to give up.

As she nudges his sneaker with her old penny loafer and offers the hamburger special as a reward (“Stop sighing, Jughead, you’re sucking up all the oxygen in the room”) Ethel looks up and sees Betty Cooper. The girl stands, frozen, her eyes on Jughead. Intent on the math problems Ethel has set him, he’s oblivious to her prescence.

“Joining them?” Pops asks with a jerk of his head at Jughead.

Betty raises one hand in an almost defensive gesture, shakes her head, and rushes out.

#

Ethel knows the rules. When she tutors people, they’ll talk to her and listen to what she has to say. In school, however, they’ll act as though they don’t know her.

“You let them take advantage,” her mother would say. “Don’t blame them – it’s on you. You’re such a doormat, Ethel.”

Jughead doesn’t appear to know the rules. At lunch, he plops next to Ethel. “Hey,” he grunts.

“Oh.” Flustered, she nearly drops her juice. “Are you sure you want to sit here?”

He glances over one shoulder. Ethel, following his gaze, sees Betty leaning on the shoulder of a good-looking athlete as she laughs into his upturned face.

“Yeah,” Jughead says. “I’m sure.”

#

It can’t last, and Ethel knows this as well. Two people as aware of each other as Jughead and Betty are will eventually collide. In Ethel’s logical and ordered mind, she sees it as a matter of gravity.

Things move more slowly than she thinks, however, and she’s almost used to having a friend. Jughead Jones: her friend.

Of course, the universe has to punish her for such audacity. The next morning she sees him at Betty’s locker, both hands light on her trim waist. He crowds behind Betty, chin hooked over her shoulder, intent as she takes out her books. “You’re so neat,” Ethel hears him mutter. “My locker looks like a bomb went off in it.”

“A bomb did go off in it,” Betty grins.

Jughead gasps, and his jaw drops. “That was not a bomb. Well, okay, maybe a cute little baby bomb. The wrapper was pink, Betts. It should have exploded in glitter and rainbows.”

Ethel passes them on her way to French, and they don’t notice.

#

“Hello?”

Ethel looks up from her notes on Fermat’s Last Theorem. Betty raises both eyebrows. “Sorry,” she apologizes. “I didn’t mean to interrupt what you were doing. May I join you?”

Before Ethel can answer, Betty puts a neatly-folded brown bag lunch on the table and pulls out a chair. “I think we were in third grade together, right?”

“Right.” Ethel was in the back of the room and couldn’t see the board until her dad got her the ugliest and largest glasses ever made. They had puce frames with seashells, she remembers suddenly. “You won the class trophy that year.”

“Oh, right.” Betty shrugs. “I think Miss Laige just liked my handwriting. Listen, I wanted to thank you for tutoring Juggy. He has some stuff going on…” She interrupts herself and gestures wildly. “Jug! Jughead!”

He’s already sliding into the seat next to Betty. Ethel watches her take a huge sandwich out of the paper bag, hand it to Jughead, and flank it with chips and an apple. “Ank oo,” he says around a huge bite of sandwich. “I E-el.”

“That means Thank you and Hi Ethel,” Betty says in a stage whisper. “Jug, you have some news for us, right?”

With a huge swallow, Jughead holds out his palm. Betty slaps a water bottle into it, and he drinks like a nomad in an oasis. “Ah, that’s the stuff,” he says finally. “Yeah, so hey Ethel. I’m going to pass that math class after all.”

“Because of you,” Betty adds. Her eyes are warm, friendly. “So I thought the three of us could go out to celebrate. Burgers at Pops tonight?”

“I’m broke,” Jughead declares without embarrassment. “Pretend these snazzy threads I’m wearing are actually a barrel with shoulder-straps, and you’ll get the idea.”

“No Pops then.” Betty nods decisively. “Shoot, I’d invite you guys over, but my parents are having a work meeting tonight.”

Ethel feels a bubble inside, a momentous decision she can’t hold back. “Would you like,” she gulps, “would you like – I don’t suppose you’d like to come to my house instead?”

#

“Betty and Jughead? _Jug?_ Head?” Ethel’s mother shakes her head. “What were you thinking? I bet he’s chasing after her. Right? You know what that means – they’ll ignore you to go sit in a corner together, and you’ll be miserable.” She flounces out, shaking her coiffed head.

Ethel’s nerves are already frazzled, and her mother’s warning makes it worse. When the doorbell rings, she jumps up and opens the door, heart bumping against her ribs. All she really wants to do is think about numbers and equations. Maybe she can claim sickness, a near-fatal plague with germs. Lots of icky, crawling germs.

Betty breezes in with Jughead behind her. “Here,” he declares, thrusting a handful of limp daisies – complete with roots – at Ethel.

“Thanks.” No one has ever brought her flowers, and she’s not sure what to do. Go find a vase? Hold them all night? But Betty makes it okay by asking for water and arranging them in an old jar from her backpack. In moments the wilted daisies look like a picture in a magazine.

“Whew! Flower emergency averted.” Jughead looks around the kitchen. “Swell place you got here, Eth. Can I call you Eth? Got any food, since we’re in the kitchen?”

After several weeks of hanging with Jughead, she knows what to expect. Ethel’s prepared a few trays of appetizers, lots of cookies, and a plate of cut-up hoagies.

“You could check out the hot tub,” she suggests, “while I get out the food.”

“Hot tub? Really? Wait, don’t tell me. I’ll sniff it out.” Jughead’s nose twitches, and he beelines for the door to the pool area.

Betty tsks. “I better follow him to make sure he doesn’t eat your furniture, if that’s okay with you. That boy is terminally hungry. Uh, be back to help in a second?”

But Ethel waves her off. She gets a tray, loads it up with food, and puts a few drinks in a cooler.

At the door to the huge Jacuzzi patio, Ethel stops. Is she being desperate, old Ugly Muggs with her lame little tray of snacks? After all, what can she really offer these two? And – oh God – are they already in the hot tub, maybe naked even, kissing and who knows what?

However, Jughead and Betty are apart when Ethel comes in. He’s got his pants rolled up and feet in the tub, while Betty sits demurely on a low stool.

“One last chapter,” he’s saying, “and I’ll be done – great balls of fire! Betts, look at what Ethel’s brought us!”

Ethel blushes. “It’s dumb,” she mumbles. “Just a few…” But he’s already making grabby hand gestures, and as she puts the huge array of food beside the hot tub, Jughead digs right in.

“The man does love his food.” Betty’s mouth folds into an origami shape that could be titled ‘Well, what are you gonna do.’ “But Ethel, we really wanted to treat _you._ This is so nice! Wow, these sliders look amazing. I need the recipe.”

“You do need the recipe.” Jughead nods so furiously his beanie nearly falls off. “I don’t suppose you want a badly-written and sentimental novel as a reward, do you, Eth?”

“What,” Ethel intones.

Betty explains. Apparently Jughead has written a book about pirates and detectives, a fact that blows Ethel away. “Wait,” she interrupts after a few minutes. “You wrote _a novel?”_

Jughead stops chewing momentarily. “Yeah.”

“It’s so awesome.” Alight with enthusiasm, Betty bounces on her stool and leans towards Ethel. “Arch and I couldn’t wait each day for Juggy to arrive with the next installment. And there’s a swashbuckling wench who is kick-ass, too.”

She tumbles into a long explanation of the story, rife with interruptions and wild gesticulations. Betty, in her enthusiasm, prances out of her seat and pretends to fight a duel to illustrate her point. Jughead just keeps chowing steadily through the plate of sandwiches. “They have toothpicks in them,” he explains when Betty points out that he’s eaten seven subs. “With little frills on the end.”

“Oh, frilly toothpicks.” Betty stretches her eyes at Ethel. “Well, that explains everything.”

Ethel sits back with a forgotten pretzel in her hand and watches them. Her stomach is no longer tied in knots, and as she listens to Jughead expound on the taste-adding properties of garnishes (“Gherkins can save a bad entrée, Betts, fight me on this,”) Ethel gets a bolt of inspiration for Fermat’s Last Theorem. She grabs a napkin, feels in her pocket for a pen, and starts to write.

Math unfolds for Ethel like a view obscured by mist. As she works, the beautiful landscape becomes clear, peaked with towering castles and beautiful forests. Numbers align in her head in loops and spirals, dragons of exponents and fire. Sometimes it’s an adventure to work on her problems, and tonight is one of those nights.

When she finishes, Ethel looks up. Both Jughead and Betty are watching her intently. “That,” Betty breathes, “was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that. You’re an artist.”

Ethel looks at the napkin, blotted with her notes. Later she’ll transcribe it into one of the marble notebooks she keeps by the bed – her own form of journaling – but for now her thoughts look creased and smudged. “It’s stupid. Who sits there and does math in front of guests? Be honest, guys, it’s weird.”

“I like weird.” Jughead grins at her.

Betty picks up a cookie and gives him half. “Honestly, it was so cool to watch you work. I could almost see inside your head, like you were creating something that never existed before.”

She takes a bite of her cookie and adds, “The three of us have _got_ to hang out again some time.”

“Hell yeah we do.” Jughead waggles a tiny object at her. “Frilly toothpicks, remember?”

#

Jughead instructs Ethel to bring in all leftovers for lunch the next day, and Betty’s promised to make the three of them matching necklaces with her wood-burning set. “So we can be in a secret society,” she adds when Jughead demurs. “No one else will know about it.”

“Hence the name Secret Society,” Ethel murmurs. It earns her a barked laugh from Jughead and Betty’s warm hug.

“Thanks for inviting us!” Betty calls from the sidewalk. “It was a real gas!”

“A _real gas_?” Jughead repeats, his voice strident with scorn. “What are you, Art Buchwald?”

“Maybe I am. Deal with it.”

Bickering in a friendly manner, the two of them bump hips and shove each other off the sidewalk. Ethel folds her arms and watches them leave from her porch. Just as they turn the corner, she sees Jughead pick up Betty to swing her around. The girl’s laughter bubbles on the twilit air, bright and fizzed with happiness.

Ethel can’t stop smiling. _I get to be part of that_ , she thinks.

She goes upstairs, locks herself inside her bedroom, and removes the napkin from her pocket. Earrings go into a small dish, shoes on stretchers lined up inside her closet. Her sweater gets hung on a matching hanger.

When she’s ready, Ethel opens her notebook and unfolds the napkin. Pen in hand, she prepares to set sail on a sea of numbers, lit up by the stars inside her own mysterious mind.

**Author's Note:**

> A reviewer once said Ethel Muggs was the least interesting character in the Archie comicverse, which irritated me. Ethel is my mother's middle name, and I always felt Ms Muggs got short-changed as a character in the comics, so this story is my gift to her.
> 
> At the same time, I wanted to showcase the strength of Betty and Jughead's relationship. I'm damn sure those two wouldn't sit in a weird and uncomfortable PDA but would be a lot of fun to hang with after school. 
> 
> It's my headcanon that Ethel gets to be part of that.


End file.
